063-064 » no matter how much / part ii (group A)

[villagemod]

WHO: Group A members only.
WHERE: Mathias Township proper
WHEN: Days 063-064
WHAT: Matthias becomes a little larger and a little smaller at the same time.
WARNINGS: (PM this account to have a warning added!)
NOTES: Plotting post over here!

RECOMMENDED ♫ DEADLY AVENGER "Raiju"

DAY 063-064
NO MATTER HOW MUCH
“No matter how much suffering you went through,
you never wanted to let go of those memories.”
— Haruki Murakami
At first, in the calm following the storm, nothing seems amiss. When the residents awake, it is to another glorious morning dawning in the unsettling paradise that is Mathias Township. Indeed, it does seem rather glorious that morning, for there is sunshine in a blue sky that has been cleared of any remnant of the angry storm clouds from the day before. But before long, residents will start to notice signs of something being not quite right.

It should be a familiar sensation to most by now.

It begins as just a feeling, a strange hint of something in the air, a nagging voice at the back of the mind. They can't quite put their finger on it but there is something. Something wrong, something that shouldn't be — which is quite a statement in a town where everything shouldn't be. But then the pieces will begin to come together.

A person has gone who ought to be there. This in itself is not a strange occurrence, for many have vanished and then returned, or not. This time, though, it is one person, and then two and three... A dozen people or more have gone, with no trace of their whereabouts to be found.

No resident is alone, thankfully. There are others who also remain: friends, acquaintances, strangers. Others who are just as trapped in this nightmarish place.

As the hours stretch on and residents begin to venture beyond their self-claimed shelters and move about the town, they will find that their fellow captives are not the only things that have vanished. The Chasm is gone as well, the crack in the earth that once stretched across and cut off the western part of town. There is not even the smallest mark to show where it had once been; it has gone so completely that some might wonder if they had merely imagined it.

---

ABOUT THE NEW LOCATIONS
POPPY COTTAGE This bed and breakfast has a sense of casual elegance with the elusive quality of being both sophisticated and comfortable at the same time. Aside from being covered in dust and grime, of course.

PENHEW HOUSE Perhaps familiar to some in Mathias, this grand house is different from any of the others the residents have entered. It looks... new. Fresh. Clean. The usual thick layers of dust and grime that would be caked onto every visible surface are nowhere in sight; this absence may be a relief for some and unsettling to others. There are certainly other unsettling things to be found in this location.

THE OLD CHURCH Barely more than ruins, the property is marked by a crumbled stone outline that has no roof and only partial walls, nothing left inside besides a broken cobblestone floor.

BANEBERRY HALL From the outside, Baneberry Hall seems like your average rich person's house, but one would be mistaken to assume anything of the sort. Even the baneberries that cover the back lawn leading to the forest treeline are deceptive, for they appear harmless but are fatal to any human foolish enough to eat them.

The building is decaying from within. The rooms have begun to rot, from the parlors and libraries still done up in grand and expensive style to the bedrooms that have locks on the doors and bars on the windows. There are restraints in some of those bedrooms, while others are bereft of sharp objects. In the hall closets, there are identical sets of white pajamas of all sizes, and the offices have locked cabinets (that may be picked) full of a rainbow of sedatives (that will not replenish). The names on doors and in logbook lists are all smudged beyond legibility, and all paperwork has been water-damaged and weathered, leaving no indication of who may have been kept in those bedrooms or why. But within each room, there is an item that may be familiar to one of the residents now wandering its halls. As caked in dust and grime as anything else, each item is placed as if it belongs there, as if it might have been there for years. But it couldn't have been... could it?



ABOUT THE ITEMS FROM HOME
Within the unsettling walls of Baneberry Hall, residents may find OBJECTS that are uncomfortably familiar to them. Each item has one singular memory attached to it that, when touched in any way, will be experienced first hand, as if the person receiving it had lived it themselves. This person will endure all of the associated emotions and psychological reactions to the memory that the memory's owner experienced.

— Items may only be found within Baneberry Hall. These items from home are not all in one room or a specific location but instead are scattered throughout the bedrooms. (Only the items on this list are available to this group.)

— Ownership and possession of the item are important elements to this event. While the item is in possession of someone who is not its owner, it will continue to infect all who touch it with the memory that belonged to its owner. The item will also, before long, begin to make the possessor ill, both physically and emotionally uncomfortable and upset. This only occurs until the item is reunited with its owner, or until it is no longer in someone else's possession. (For example, if Person A finds Person B's teddy bear and carries it with them, they will continue to experience the bear's associated memory until they no longer have it in their possession, whether this means they have left it somewhere or it has been returned to Person B.)

— Recipients of memories will retain those memories even after the event has ended.

— When the owner of an item finds their item or has it returned to them, they will also experience the memory once themselves, having it returned to them as if they had just lived those moments again. The memory is only replayed once in their minds and then the memory effect of the object is gone. After this point, the item can be held by the owner or any others without consequence.

— If a person removes an item from its room in Baneberry Hall but does not remove the item from the property entirely, the item will be mysteriously returned to its original location when no one is looking. This is so that people do not have to keep close track of where items are going in the possible changing of hands, so the original owners can still easily locate the item without having to plan in great detail. Once an item is removed from the property, it will not return to its original location even if it is discarded by the possessor before reaching its original owner. Instances such as this should be planned among all involved parties, including the owner of the item.

— Once an item is removed from the property, please comment below so that information may be updated. Items that are not removed by the end of the event may reappear at a later time, so accurate records are essential.

— Before an item's memory is viewed by someone other than the owner, permission must be granted or requested for that memory to be viewed by another character. Because the experience is an uncomfortable one for the other characters, the viewing of memories not their own should ideally be kept to a small number.

---

CONDITIONS UPDATE

— THE WEATHER conditions remain fairly typical for early fall: warm days and cool nights. It feels almost like spring arriving except that there fewer red and orange leaves on the ground and more of them oddly returning to the trees and slowly fading to green. It's like watching one of those nature documentaries that have a timelapse of the seasons, only it's going in reverse.

— THE FOG has new boundaries.

— Residents may now wander the southern stretch of the forest surrounding Mathias Township — it is possible to leave the paths but potentially unwise to do so.
— The fog has also retreated from the western section of town entirely.
— Access to the northern section of the forest is still blocked beginning a few dozen yards past the treeline; this section of fog will urge residents to stay huddled within the town proper by inducing a physical reaction of panic and fear.

— DISAPPEARANCES AND DEATHS continue! Yennefer, Number Five, and Tony Stark have vanished and Ellie is still missing, though this may be difficult to tell with half the town also seemingly having vanished. Will Graham's body may be found within the ruins of the Old Church; he appears to have been frightened to death. (If someone decides to take care of the body, please report it below. For in-game reasons, this does not need to be coordinated across groups.)

— ALCOHOL supplies have run dry, save for any dregs that have been squirreled away by individual residents. Moonshine can still be acquired by those in desperate need.

---

OOC NOTES

— NEW MAP Thanks so much to Scy for yet another amazing new map of Mathias!

— UPDATES Don't forget to report updates as they come up! Changes to locations (like toppling a few bookshelves in the library), big plots you have coming up that will affect the game (parties, major property destruction, etc), or exciting discoveries that may tie into the game's mythology (even the things provided by the mod) are very helpful to have in one place so relevant page updates can be made. IC events are also helpful to know about in advance so they can be included in the log write-ups.

— MOD STATUS For those who don't know, I run a summer program that is set to start in just 2 weeks. We've only recently been given the green light to go ahead in person, so it's a scramble to get everything pulled together in time. My non-RP life is going to be busy and chaotic for the next while and I am thus asking for your forgiveness and understanding as things continue to be slow, as I cannot guarantee timely mod responses beyond weekends, and even that is not guaranteed.

— NEXT LOG Because of the aforementioned real-life chaos, the next log will be more relaxed and free form with everyone coming back together again and having a few chill days. It would be very much appreciated if some of the more intense investigations could be saved to take place in future logs, as the new locations that are opening up in this log will remain open in the next few at least and there will be plenty of time to explore all their mysteries.

— ITEMS FROM HOME The items from home remaining in Baneberry Hall will not be available past this log, at least not in this form, so if you would like to play with these elements, you should not sleep on this opportunity. More things may show up in the future but, for now, this is the main event.

— DW NOTIFS Back at the beginning of the year, the issue of missing email notifs was discussed in a code push plurk by Mark of the DW admin team. For those who missed it, the gist is that the issue with missing notifs is not going to be fixed anytime soon. The issue is so sporadic that the dev team has concluded the only way to possibly fix it is to redo the notification system entirely. This issue does not extend to DW's internal inbox, so short of checking every thread you're involved in, the DW inbox is the best way to make sure you're not missing things.

— ACTIVITY CHECK Beginning with June's AC (posted at the start of July), all tags that consist of only dialogue will count as 0.5 comments, not just those that occur in an inbox thread. This applies to both AC and AP totals.

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[tinstar]

As beaten and abused as both Tim and Raylan were after their evening, they were both on the left side of too exhausted to move, much less be any good to anyone. Not their plan when they went out there. Raylan, dressed only in his jeans, dirty undershirt and waterlogged watch, was a ragdoll in his chair, face drawn in his tiredness. He just needed a few hours rest, was all. A nap to make up for being up and working harder than he'd asked his body to ever work all night.

There was no chance of being comfortable enough for his naps to be restful in anyway so once Doc comes into the room, Raylan is awake again with a sharp breath as he cracks an eye that follows the gunslinger in front of him.

"Mm, I did. Day before yesterday, marked it on your calendar and all." As Doc kneels, Raylan unevenly pushes himself up with a pained breath, half an attempt to stop him. But the argument died in his throat as he finally saw his feet.

"I was tryin', you know," he murmured. "Storm didn't leave us any place to go, so we thought it might choose to destroy an important building to get to us.. Henry, I-." Last night it didn't sound crazy. In the calm, quiet morning of aftermath, it sounded insane. "I swear it was followin' me. And I couldn't bring it here. Couldn't have it.. set onto our houses. Endangerin' everyone else.." Raylan sighed softly. "I tried to stop us halfway up."

He was trying to be a Good Boy, he swears.

[thering]

What calendar? The only thing Raylan's been marking is his hips and the side of his neck. And Doc would rather Raylan be doing that with whomever he wants rather than showing up like this.

"Sit your stubborn ass back down," Doc commands when Raylan tries to move - he's getting stupider by the minute; must be the missing hat taking his brains along with - and he resumes dabbing Raylan's feet before wrapping the towel around them and letting it sit for a while. They'll need a proper clean up, a change of water and towel, and then Doc has to wash his hands again before he even starts rummaging through the first aid kit. Suffice to say, they'll be here a while. Raylan has all the time and freedom in the world to let the crazy out.

"I'm not saying I don't believe you, but the house got a lil' flooded anyway without you jinxing the place." He's not going to mention that he had A Moment sitting in a puddle of water in the garage alone in the dark. With any luck it would never come up in conversation and he can continue to fuss over Raylan.

"Anything else you maybe sliced open that I should take a look at?"

[tinstar]

Raylan huffed a breath at the command, eyeing Doc for a long second before speaking the rest of it. He appreciated the tending, even if sometimes he had to be tied down to take it.

"It was more than a little water," Raylan replied with an admonishing tilt of his head. "Better a little floodin' than the whole roof comin' down or the windows blowin' out again. Since I'm already givin' you enough work.."

At the question, Raylan shook his head a little, hands turning out to show the skin torn abuse there, but they were just raw fingertips, a fraction too close to bleeding for anyone's comfort but fine enough.

"Not really, but.." He looked over and nodded at Tim. "When he wakes up, see if you can't get him to let you verify he hasn't broken somethin' internal. Stupid ass wouldn't come back when I asked him too.. Fell off the bluffs into the ocean." He didn't care if the sniper heard him, fairly sure that Tim wasn't asleep, but pretending for the sake of them all and an avoidance of his own care.

[thering]

"He did what now?" Doc asks incredulously, voice stepping higher and higher in register with each word. He tears his gaze away from Raylan's hands to look over his shoulder at Tim - okay, more like glare, but he's pretending to sleep so he can't see it either way - but he can only deal with one dumbass at a time so he turns back to finish tending to Raylan first.

Broken bones are going to be a bitch around these parts but why break the bad news to Tim while he's still pretending?

"Scream if it hurts," Doc says dryly as he unwraps the towel and gives Raylan's calves a few firm squeezes, working his way down Raylan's right leg from the back of his knee down to the ankle, wiggling the foot, then the left. When he's satisfied that the only thing Raylan might have broken was his pride, he gets up to change the water and the towel out for a fresh one.

"Was that what happened in the places you were sheltering at?" he asks once he returns for the final round of cleaning up before burning through the first aid supplies. "I mean, the windows were rattlin', but nothin' broke and the roof stayed on somehow. Lord knows Mathias did try to flush us out." But it ended up being such a normal night that Doc was woken up by Malcolm's screaming like it was just any other night in Mathias.

[tinstar]

"He's lucky he's not dead. Thought he was 'til I saw him coughin' up on the shore. He swears he's fine and he'll probably fight you, but." Raylan was still worried anyway. Nothing that Tim could have promised him would have sufficed anyway. He watched with a pinch of curiosity at what Doc was checking for but didn't ask and complied by lifting each leg a fraction in kind so he could move the ankle about freely. No, thank god - nothing broken.

"For the few minutes I was allowed to stay there. Damn near got struck tryin' to go into another house. Couldn't imagine brinin' it here. We ended up in the tunnels. Figured she couldn't get us down there.." His eyes settled back on Doc's face.

"How'd you fare it here?" He'd say 'water aside' but he knew that water itself and the way it was relentless was something of an issue.

[thering]

"I will let you know if he ain't." Nobody here is fine, they're all just pretending, but if Tim is an acceptable level of 'fine', Doc will let him get away with that pretence.

There's no visible reaction when Raylan mentions the tunnels - there was no way anyone could convince Doc to go back down there, not even if they needed an Ark to make it out of last night's flood, but it's not as if Raylan had scrambled down in that hidey-hole alone so at least he wasn't as stupid as the rest of his adventure sounded like.

"I was looking for Ellie, before the streets turned to rivers and the water started coming in here. She is still missing," he redirects deftly away from himself. "Her and a few others I noticed, no longer in the vicinity this morning. Once you two are cleaned up and resting, I will go for another wander."

[tinstar]

Raylan nodded shortly. Good. He trusted that Henry would, even if they couldn't do anything about it other than keep an eye on the man. And even if Henry didn't tell him, he trusted Henry to keep the eye if needed.

The tunnels had been the choice of last resort. Raylan was fine going down, in the day, with company, so last night had broken all his rules and no sleep had been had for it. He couldn't trust that Mathis wouldn't decide to flood them out or send the Shadow Man up the tunnels for them - he had only just pushed all of those ideas to the side.

"Shit," he muttered darkly of Ellie's disappearance. He was still sure that her disappearance had something to do with them trying to cross the gap. But he'd noted the lack of substantial answer. "Well, let me know who else you think is missin', I'll keep my eyes peeled.. Don't suppose you got any sleep last night, did you." It wasn't really a question and if Doc looked up, he'd see the subtle worry behind the deeper wrinkles on Raylan's face and eyes.

[thering]

"Few hours. It was already dark when I returned." And then he sort of just sat there in the garage in some kind of catatonic state, but who's counting? "Moved some of the stockpile and the liquor upstairs. I'll bring them back down for ya." Would be cruel to make Raylan climb and crawl for his moonshine.

After he's done with the cleaning up, Doc pats Raylan's legs down dry with the last fresh towel he has on standby before he gets up to put all those things away, pouring the dirty water out and adding to the laundry. He washes his hands and returns to where he'd been kneeling, patching Raylan up where necessary.

"I was hoping Ellie would have returned, but when I ventured next door I could not find Yennefer either. Tony Stark was not in his house across the road. And your new friends Jeff and Athena are not next door the other way either." It seems they are alone on this corner of Phillips Drive. It doesn't bode well.

"I-- called Wynonna. She didn't answer," Doc adds quietly, as though he doesn't want to talk about her. Maybe not in front of Tim.

[tinstar]

Humming his acknowledgment, Raylan only glanced up the stairs before going back to studying Henry's features for whatever the gunslinger had tucked away into those endless pockets he had. It was a kindness, to not make Raylan do stairs. He wasn't even sure he was going to be able to walk later, but it wasn't going to stop him from trying.

Raylan sat back, eyes following Doc around as best he could until he came back in front of him. Doc was too good; he didn't deserve the attention, considering how he got the injuries. Somewhere, in the back of his head, he'd rather get shot. At least he was largely blameless in that.

But as Henry kept going, so did the list and Raylan's brow pinched further and further until he looked like someone had stolen his boots right off from his feet and he couldn't say who it was. Everyone else was important, of course, but Wynonna was Henry's woman, whatever he might say. Whatever she might say, really - he'd seen them together at the sandwich and soup party. He knew what open love looked like and he knew how sharp the knife of worry for her would be.

"We'll check her house anyway. Maybe the phone just got unplugged." He was a terrible harbinger of hope, really. "That sounds like most of the block though.. You should check the Boarding house, see if anyone's there. If not, we might have to start poolin' ideas about what's happened... We'll find her, Henry. Or we'll walk off our legs till we've covered every inch of this place to make sure she's not tucked away somewhere."

If she wasn't, they were resigned to waiting, like with so many of the others. It hurt and it sucked but if anyone was going to be able to weather it, it was the men in the room. Possibly with copious amounts of moonshine.

[thering]

If Raylan was indeed stupid enough to get himself shot in this place, Doc is going to leave him to bleed out on the streets. He will have ample opportunity to have a stern word with the Marshal the next day when he gets spat back out of the beach.

"We, are not doing anything. You are staying here, with Tim. I cannot be running around scraping the two of you off the floor on top of looking for everyone else." Almost as quickly as that flareup of irritation sparked and ignited, Doc stuffs it all back into his hat. "I will call upon her later." Turn the house she has claimed for herself upside-down looking for her, try not to wreck anything in his frustration. And maybe he wants to spend some time alone in there, talk to the creases she had left behind on her bed this morning, unhealthy as it is. She so likes to press his buttons sometimes - it's a lot easier than talking to her face.

"And the Boarding House, also. I will return and give you the full story." Not that he would claim to know every single person in town but he was a professional gambler. Raylan can trust him to be able to count heads.

[tinstar]

Raylan lifted his eyebrows at Doc's tone but only hummed a note. Never mind that they hadn't asked for nor expected any scraping, but he knew that Doc's role of caretaker was one the man took on himself. A role that Raylan had leaned on before; he could grant him the room to be irritated without it being a capital crime.

"I hope you're not expectin' me to stay down all day, right? Don't worry-" he continued immediately, one hand lifting to stay any objection that Doc might give him. "Not for several hours and after at least half a nap. Last night was.. somethin'. I need to see what she's changed."

Because she always changed something.

"And I promise I'll take it easy, okay?" Did that cover all the bases of concern?

[thering]

Maybe Raylan isn't accustomed to the kind of Overly Concerned Dadding where there's no prospect of getting beaten to a pulp and the authority all rests in the eyebrows. He's had a couple months to learn and he'll fast get used to it.

Several hours and half a nap doesn't feel like a good compromise to him at all, but it's better than Raylan launching himself out of his favourite chair and hobbling down off the porch in a hurry to plant his face in the dirt. Doc sighs a rather displeased but obvious concessionary sigh.

Doc would have tucked a bottle of 'shine under the one arm and slipped a Colt into the other hand, because nothing says Mathias's Best Overly Concerned Dad like giving a young man a .38, but they'll just have to settle for the 'shine.

"I'll bring you a few things before I go," Doc offers once he's finished up, taking Raylan's hand and turning it to the left then to the right. It's ugly, and raw, but nothing too serious. The man still has hands attached to his arms, can hold up a bottle and probably still shoot straight, ish. Can't ask for more.

He'll fetch both Raylan and Tim a change of clothes, some more water and towels, enough moonshine for the both of them (hopefully? Tim... seems like a drinker, not that Doc has noticed, or commented) and a couple of muesli bars from the pantry. He'd moved everything to the top shelf last night hoping the flood wouldn't take the whole ground floor along with, so there's still some edible prepackaged stuff they can go through.

[tinstar]

He wasn't used to any concern, really, so it was all strange. The fact that he hadn't gotten stern about it was good enough; he was trying to take it gracefully. The fact that Doc wasn't arguing the negotiations was progress on it's own - two immoveable mountains of stubbornness against each other.

"Thank you," he murmured with a quiet nod of his head as Doc turned his hands over this way and that. Of all the injuries of the men combined, his hands were the worst. Raylan was glad there wasn't a lot that needed doing otherwise he would have felt badly that Doc was doing it all.

"Maybe we'll get a break after this, hmm? A few more days where various shit isn't hittin' the fan. I know Mathis likes to keep it interestin' but I could have done without the hard wash."

[thering]

While he still would have preferred Raylan take it a lot easier than he's planning to, at least until his hands heal up, he thinks this battle might be easier won if he can let Raylan gain some ground here and there. He places the borrowed hand back onto Raylan's lap and leans back with a quiet little sigh. He has observations to make about how some of that shit is being fabricated, but he isn't the mood to defend Mathias for her bad behaviour, and he'd rather devote his energy to fixing and cleaning than nagging at Marshal #1 and Marshal #2, and getting nowhere fast with it.

He'll just count his blessings, that the two of them came back in one piece. It's a little awkward to be touching Tim in various places while he's sleeping it off, even if it's just to check for any broken bones or bruises, so he'll be playing fetch and checking in later, hoping Raylan will make good on his promise to keep Tim and his own stubborn ass at home, at least for a few hours.

"Get some rest, alright? We'll do a proper writeup and file our complaint later."

[tinstar]

They were, unfortunately, stubborn, bullheaded men. Much to the despair of Art, though Tim had always been better behaved than Raylan could ever dream of but Tim had things much more simple out there. Doc now knew what it was like running their office.

"Hey," Raylan started before Henry could get up and sweep out. "Be careful out there, huh? I'll stay here for at least a few hours, if you get back this way in time to update me.. Let me know if you find anyone. Numbers we have are just as important as numbers we don't.. And Don't worry, if you can help it. They can't all be gone. This can't be permanent."

Raylan worried about Henry just as much as he worried about Malcolm just as much as he now worried about Tim and Neal, but it felt like Henry maybe had less places to turn with it. No matter how contentious his relationship with Wynonna was, Henry still loved her. He didn't have to say it out loud for Raylan to know that to be true; he saw them together. It was very sweet. There was no way he wasn't going to worry.